


Scars

by Cielo_Notturno__Liriel



Series: Song of Xiath [1]
Category: Original Work, Pathfinder (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Amputation, Body Modification, Chain Devil, Chains, Child Abuse, Dark, Drow, Evil, Fictional Religion & Theology, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kuthites, Masochism, Original Character-centric, Pain, Religious Fanaticism, Rituals, Sadism, Scarification, Slavery, Tieflings, evil bard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-08-24 12:29:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8372314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cielo_Notturno__Liriel/pseuds/Cielo_Notturno__Liriel
Summary: They say Kyton tieflings are born with their scars. They lie.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was the background of one of my characters. It's the first time I write in English, so I hope I didn't make too many mistakes. Not betaed. I might write more about Xiath in the future.  
> It is pretty dark, please read the tags and tell me if I need to add more.

They say Kyton tieflings are born with their scars. They lie. 

 

The scars on my left cheek were given to me upon my birth. The Matriarch of the Ra’nii household was curious about me, in the same way she could be curious about an unusual crystal. One of her lesser priestesses got pregnant during a mystic mating ritual with a devil, and she wanted to see what the spawn would look like. I was told that she was deeply disappointed by my appearance. My hair was the color of snow and moonlight; beautiful, but common. Everyone in the household had the same hair. My skin was dark, not the deep black of a pureblood drow, but a dark grey with blue undertones. And it was unmarred. With my little pointed ears and my elven features, I looked enough like them to be seen as bland. The Matriarch put her sharp nails on my face and curled them until she drew blood. Then she smiled and walked away. 

 

Some of the scars on my back, I received during my early childhood. It wasn’t done as deliberate cruelty, though one could say that everything ever done by a drow is deliberately cruel. They are vicious towards each other, and unreasonably harsh with their children. Whipping a low rank child, or even a high rank one if they were male, was the norm. I barely remember any of it. The main lesson was branded into my mind though, as my mother recited it every time: 

“Just take it, Xiath. Don’t beg, never beg. Drows never ask for mercy, for they know that they will receive none”. 

 

I do remember when the Matriarch fell. Her ambitious younger sister bribed our most powerful sorcerer into helping her stage a coup. As the highest ranking male in the house, he controlled most of the guards. They descended on the Matriarch and her priestesses with the deadly neatness that is so renowned among our race. It was a bloodbath. I was with some other high ranking children when the assassins came. They couldn’t let the direct descendants of the Matriarch live, to grow up and plot revenge. I knew that, and thought that they were going to kill me too, and I raised my chin and stared at them with my golden eyes. 

“Leave the halfblood, she’s not a threat. Just sell her to the Lands Above, we could do with the money”.

And so I became a slave. 

 

They say Kytons revere pain. That part is true, but it doesn’t mean that it stops hurting. I screamed when they branded me with a hot iron. A crude letter on my left wrist, just above the iron cuff that was fitted there earlier. Then they left me chained in a big room, with other unfortunate beings. The chains were heavy and rusty, but I was fascinated by them. I didn’t mind that they restricted my movements. They felt better than silk on my skin. In the darkness of the place, they quietly sang to my dormant magic. I found their lullaby soothing. 

 

They say Kuthites revere pain, and it's an understatement. That’s why they were willing to pay for a foreign slave. They were fanatics, zealots, and they thought that my infernal blood was a blessing. After a few years with them, I thought so too.

At home, I only spoke Undercommon, the tongue of the Dark Lands. When I was sold to the Umbral Church in Pangolais, I couldn’t understand a word they said. They taught me to answer to the whispered hisses of the Shadowtongue, before teaching me the Common tongue of Avistan. By then, I had learned a lot about my new owners, and many of those teachings were permanently etched into my skin. 

Pain was a mean and an end, pain was divine, pain was what our sadistic god, Zon-Kuthon, desired to inflict upon his servants. And his servants wished to inflict it upon everyone else. 

Pain was ecstasy. After some years into the Church, no one would know that my skin hadn’t borne the Kyton marks from birth. 

After five years in the temple, they told me that I was to be marked during the new year eve’s ceremony. They chained me on my knees before the priest, and the metal links gave me strength. Then the priest’s blade started cutting. It took so long, I was afraid I would faint from the blood loss. He scarified a spiked chain, the symbol of our god, on my face. It started from my forehead, above my right eye, and continued below the eye until it met my chin. I didn’t want to scream, so I sang. My beautiful voice was my pride. I often sang during the ceremonies, to mix my songs with the screams, to tell our god that we worshipped him. I sang louder during the next ceremony, when the blade cut into my neck and collarbone, to continue the dark design of the barbed chain. In time, my scarification waved gracefully around my breast, down my side, my hip, my thigh, to end at the ankle. The raised scar is lovely to the touch. When my lovers trace it, it feels divine.  

 

When my faith-mark was complete, I was deemed worthy of inflicting pain, and I quickly became a favorite at the temple. My blessed blood whispered to me, and I let it guide my hands, my nails, my blades. There was a price. Before I could touch a sacred victim, a priest touched my skin with a white-hot poker. It was meant to keep my mind sharp, to let my own pain being an offering, and to erase any pity I might feel for the victim. That part was never necessary, but the deed had to be done. The round burns sprung from my chain-scar like blossoms on a vine. 

And during all of it, I sang. When I had free time, I studied languages and legends and lore. And, secretly, I learned what I could of the reigns that lay beyond the darkness of Nidal.  

 

The Umbral Church depended directly from the Umbral Court. Amongst its duties, it was required to assist the Umbral Army when they had to interrogate a captive. None of the priests could do it, for their mind was too far gone to the god to be able to elicit coherent answers from a prisoner. It was a job reserved for novices, and Temple Guards, and slaves, if they were worthy. And I was. Interrogating prisoners was my speciality. My honey voice would melt any resistance and make the person cooperate. If I was inclined to use it that way. I was a bard, after all, and I liked to say that my job was to sing, and to make people sing. If you thought screams of pain melodious, that was about accurate. 

 

And then happened the thing that I could not endure. It was decided that I was to enter in the higher ranks of the god’s esteemed servants. All the temple servants had to bear on their bodies the marks of worship, but to raise into their hierarchy, pain was not enough. I had seen enough of it to know what to expect. They always started with a toe, or a finger, or an eye. Some of the priests ended up with crippling amputations after years of service. It was supposed to be strictly voluntary, and in some cases it was. More often, people agreed due to peer pressure. But they would not ask my opinion. They would decide what part of my body I had to sacrifice to our dark god. My faith was strong, but I thought that amputation was ridiculous. After all, you couldn’t feel pain in a limb you had lost. And I was pretty fond of my limbs. My soul would always belong to the god, but I would offer the sufferance of others, not mine. 

As a tiefling, half dark elf and half fiend, I aged slowly. My magic took a long, long time to awaken, long enough that everyone thought I had none. When I realized I could control my chains, I almost cried. I had known that full Kytons could do it. I kept it a secret. I let the priests think that I was so in love with chains only because of my overdeveloped sadomasochistic streak. I never told them that the chains called to me, purred to me like pets, eager to bend to my will. 

They bent to my will that night. They helped me release my bonds, open the locks, and slip into the night. 

 

When I was far enough, I summoned a little fire with my magic songs. I heated my knife and slowly burned the skin around my slave brand. When I was finished, the skin was blistered, but it would heal to form a pretty decorative design. No one was going to give it a second glance, with all my other scars and the shiny piercings scattered across my body. The Umbral Church had no power outside of Nidal, so I would be safe from them if I could cross the border. They would never find me again. 


End file.
